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“You fetch up them clothes,” roared the skipper snatching off his bonnet and flinging it on the deck. “Fetch ’em up at once. D’ye think I’m going about in these petticuts?”

“They’re my clothes,” muttered Ted doggedly.

“Very well, then, I’ll have Bill’s,” said the skipper. “But mind you, my lad, I’ll make you pay for this afore I’ve done with you. Bill’s the only honest man aboard this ship. Gimme your hand, Bill, old man.”

“I’m with them two,” said Bill gruffly, as he turned away.

The skipper, biting his lips with fury, turned from one to the other, and then, with a big oath, walked forward. Before he could reach the fo’c’sle Bill and Ted dived down before him, and, by the time he had descended, sat on their chests side by side confronting him. To threats and appeals alike they turned a deaf ear, and the frantic skipper was compelled at last to go on deck again, still encumbered with the hated skirts.

“Why don’t you go an’ lay down,” said the mate, “an’ I’ll send you down a nice cup o’ hot tea. You’ll get histericks, if you go on like that.”

“I’ll knock your ‘ead off if you talk to me,” said the skipper.

“Not you,” said the mate cheerfully; “you ain’t big enough. Look at that pore fellow over there.”

The skipper looked in the direction indicated, and, swelling with impotent rage, shook his fist fiercely at a red-faced man with grey whiskers, who was wafting innumerable tender kisses from the bridge of a passing steamer.

“That’s right,” said the mate approvingly; “don’t give ‘im no encouragement. Love at first sight ain’t worth having.”

The skipper, suffering severely from suppressed emotion, went below, and the crew, after waiting a little while to make sure that he was not coming up again, made their way quietly to the mate.

“If we can only take him to Battlesea in this rig it’ll be all right,” said the latter. “You chaps stand by me. His slippers and sou’-wester is the only clothes he’s got aboard. Chuck every needle you can lay your hands on overboard, or else he’ll git trying to make a suit out of a piece of old sail or something. If we can only take him to Mr. Pearson like this, it won’t be so bad after all.”

While these arrangements were in hand above, the skipper and the boy were busy over others below. Various startling schemes propounded by the skipper for obtaining possession of his men’s attire were rejected by the youth as unlawful, and, what was worse, impracticable. For a couple of hours they discussed ways and means, but only ended in diatribes against the mean ways of the crew; and the skipper, whose head ached still from his excesses, fell into a state of sullen despair at length, and sat silent.

“By Jove, Tommy, I’ve got it,” he cried suddenly, starting up and hitting the table with his fist. “Where’s your other suit?”

“That ain’t no bigger that this one,” said Tommy.

“You git it out,” said the skipper, with a knowing toss of his head. “Ah, there we are. Now go in my state-room and take those off.”

The wondering Tommy, who thought that great grief had turned his kinsman’s brain, complied, and emerged shortly afterwards in a blanket, bringing his clothes under his arm.

“Now, do you know what I’m going to do?” inquired the skipper, with a big smile.

“No.”

“Fetch me the scissors, then. Now do you know what I’m going to do?”

“Cut up the two suits and make ’em into one,” hazarded the horror- stricken Tommy. “Here, stop it! Leave off!”

The skipper pushed him impatiently off, and, placing the clothes on the table, took up the scissors, and, with a few slashing strokes, cut them garments into their component parts.

“What am I to wear,” said Tommy, beginning to blubber. “You didn’t think of that?”

“What are you to wear, you selfish young pig?” said the skipper sternly. “Always thinking about yourself. Go and git some needles and thread, and if there’s any left over, and you’re a good boy, I’ll see whether I can’t make something for you out of the leavings.”